What Daniel and I want to do today is to renew our conversation with you, one that has endured over many years. That is: to pick up certain threads of our ongoing exchange, by asking you, viva voce , the questions that we sent in advance. Kenneth Frampton KF : A rather protracted kind of conversation! On-again, off-again. YS: Yes, we have always had a conversation, but every time it is different, though in a certain sense, it is a continuous dialogue, and hence the same conversation. KF: Yes, why not?
YS: And now, this conversation is marked by your imminent departure for London. As you may recall, our conversation started with my arrival in New York over two decades ago at the threshold of your office. But now this period is coming to an end, as you are not only retiring from Columbia, but also taking your leave of New York altogether.
So, that is an even bigger chapter, we could say. Daniel Sherer DS : Yes. Let us do that. This is a family tree that diverges from traditional accounts of the modern in significant ways. One important one arose because I was on the jury for a competition for a building in Buenos Aires, a museum of Latin American art that had been privately assembled by the collector who financed the museum.
In fact, Mario Botta was on that jury, and, on that occasion, he invited me to Mendrisio, to the newly established Academy of Architecture, which he founded. This says a lot about him, by the way, because he persuaded the powers that be in Bern to start an Italian-speaking university with three faculties dedicated, respectively, to information, religion, and architecture.
So, I had a little problem because I had to give a lecture where he was giving the main number. Well, let us go back to , which is the year of the Venice Biennale. And so, I was still preoccupied with trying to convey to students that the Modern Movement, as it is conventionally called, was not a homogeneous phenomenon, by any means.
